Dancing With The Fat Woman – Chapter 41

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Chapter 41

CAROLYN DRAGGED herself out of bed and through her living room to answer the incessant knocking at her front door.  Once there, she raised herself up on tippy-toes and peeked through the peephole before opening the door.

“What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“In the morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh God, I’m late!”

“It’s nine o’clock on Saturday morning.”

“Oh,” answered Carolyn with a sigh of relief.

“Where are your keys?  Why didn’t you use them to let yourself in?” Carolyn asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“I didn’t know if he was still here.”

“You mean you didn’t have my apartment staked out all night?”

“Nope.”

“Taylor, you’re slipping,” she said, without turning around to look at the man who was following her through the apartment like a little puppy.

“You’re sleeping with a cop. I’m sure he has the place staked out.”

“He’s not like you, Taylor.”

“Nope,” was his one word reply.

“I’m going to make some coffee.  You want some.”

“Sure,” Taylor answered, looking around Carolyn’s apartment for any sign of Cooper before plopping down in his usual seat, a brown leather recliner that fit his body to perfection.

“Coffee’s on,” Carolyn yelled as she dragged herself back to her bedroom.  I’m going to take a shower.  Bring me a cup when it’s ready.”

“Sure.”

Carolyn exasperated by Taylor’s one word answers rolled her eyes and trotted on off to her bedroom.

Except for the white Christmas tree, the apartment was exactly as it always was, he thought.  Neat as a pin.  Burgundy silk rose embroidered curtains hung at both living room windows. And the roomy tan sofa on which Carolyn spent many a Sunday afternoon while he watched the local football game, from the comfort of his favorite recliner, was still in its familiar spot.  As was the real wood coffee table he’d found while on a stakeout and had lugged across town and up two flights of stairs to her apartment because it reminded him of her.  Everything was the same, he thought, except for Carolyn.  Carolyn was different.

A loud hissing of steam interrupted his thoughts.  That damn coffeemaker of hers always hissed and chugged noisily when it finished brewing.

He pushed himself up out of the creamy soft leather and went into the kitchen.  He knew exactly which cabinet to open for the mugs, and precisely how much coffee to pour into her cup and how many teaspoons of sugar she liked.

He poured a full cup of coffee for himself and three-quarters of a cup for her.  No more than that.  He put two teaspoons of sugar in his cup and four in hers.

He placed his cup on the coffee table on top of one of the faux Mediterranean tiles she used as coasters and carried the other cup into the bathroom where Carolyn was showering.  The room smelled of lavender body wash.  He placed her cup near the handles of the bathroom sink.  That way she wouldn’t knock it over when she got out of the shower.  “Coffee,” he yelled.

“Thanks.  By the way it’s all over the office that Mr. Walters, bless his soul, was gay.  Is it true?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can say.  You just won’t.  The man is dead, remember.  He can’t sue us.”

“I know that.  But your bosses are sticklers for confidentiality. And they can fire me.”

“No, they won’t.  You’re too good.”

Right now, as he stood in Carolyn’s bathroom, his mind wasn’t on Raymond Walters.  It was common practice in older model Chicago apartments for the only window in the bathroom to be in the shower area above the tub.  The early morning sunlight was shining through the window perfectly illuminating Carolyn’s body.

He watched as she raised her left arm and washed it with her right hand pushing the cloth down her left side an across her stomach.  He was so engrossed, that he had not heard the front door open.  Instinct alone, saved him from a massive bruise being inflicted on the left side of his face as Emmit Cooper yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” before swinging with his right.

“Emmit?” screamed Carolyn.

But Taylor, reacting on instinct, caught Officer Cooper’s arm, pushed back, and the two men fell sideways out of the bathroom into the hallway outside of Carolyn’s bathroom.

Taylor struggled trying to keep Emmit from making contact to any part of his body with his massive fists.

Carolyn, hearing the fight in progress, grabbed her robe from where she’d hung it and threw it around herself.

“Emmit, stop it!” she screamed.  “It’s only Taylor.”

“I know who he is.  What I don’t know is why the hell he was in your bathroom watching you take a shower?!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Emmit.  He wasn’t watching me take a shower.  He was bringing me a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee my ass!  He was standing in the doorway leering at you the way David leered at Bathsheba!”

“Whaaaaat?” sang Taylor and Carolyn in unison.

                 “Unfaithful,” By Rihanna

By
Eliza D. Ankum

 

Fat Joke No. 5

What do skinny girls do that fat girls don’t.  Sit in the car while their man changes the tire.

Dancing With The Fat Woman is now available on Amazon, Kobo, and Nook.

 

Dancing With The Fat Woman – Chapter 40

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Chapter 40

THE STEAKS sat on the counter ready for grilling as plump potatoes split in half, emptied out and mixed with butter, crisp bacon bits, chives, sour cream, and topped with cheddar cheese bubbled away in the oven. Emmit Cooper sat with legs splayed wide apart watching Carolyn move around her kitchen.
This was their third date and his eyes were on her perfectly round ass. He was definitely going to hit it from the back, he thought. He closed his eyes and thought about what he was going to do later tonight. He was going to lie atop her and press his hard body against the pillow softness of her flesh.
“Dance with me,” came a voice from somewhere outside his head.
“What?” He asked opening his eyes.
“Come on, get up and dance with me,” asked Carolyn who was standing in front of him with her arms stretched out. And just as he opened his mouth to ask, “Dance to what,” the soft melodic strings of Ray Charles’ ‘Georgia on My Mind’ drifted through the apartment like a beckoning spirit.
“Baby, I don’t dance.”
“Why not?” she asked, teasingly.
“Dancing is the Devil’s way of getting a man all worked up and it opens the door to sinning.”
“So you’re saying you don’t want to sin with me? OK,” she said spinning around and walking towards the kitchen.
“I never said that, he yelled getting to his feet and following her.
“I just have to watch what I do, he said, putting his arms around her ample waist.
“In that case, she said, freeing herself from his grasp, “I wouldn’t want you to do anything sinful.”
“What a grown man and woman, who are in love with each other, do is not sinful. It’s what God intended.”
It’s a funny kind of religion you have. It’s OK for you to have sex with me but not dance with me. I think you need to get some clarification on the rules, before we get any deeper into this thing.”
“In that case, put that record back on cause we go dance tonight.”

“Georgia,” By Ray Charle

If you’ve been missing Dancing With The Fat Woman, the completed novel is available on Amazon.com/books.  Click here.

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By
Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders
STALKED! By Voices
OneThreeThirteen – Master Of The Day Of Judgment

 

 

Dancing With The Fat Woman – Chapter 39

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Chapter 39

RED LOBSTER was having its annual Lobsterfest and Emmit loved lobster. Carolyn hated lobster but loved Red Lobster’s cheddar bay biscuits and catfish. So when Emmit had suggested taking her there as payment for giving him a ride home, she’d say yes.
And that’s how she found herself sitting in a crowded Red Lobster Restaurant on a Sunday afternoon across from Reverend Emmit Cooper feeling a bit nervous but mostly, apprehensive. She’d already been burned once by a man from The New Christian Fellowship Church and she had no desire to repeat the experience.
This time, she wasn’t making any assumptions and that made her appear standoffish.
“Did I do something wrong,” asked Emmit.
“No,” responded Carolyn taking a sip of her water.
“I get the feel you don’t want to be here.”
“No, it’s not that,” she responded. I was wondering why you asked me to drive you home when there were others vying for the opportunity.”
“By others, you mean Sister Rhonda. She’s a bit off, if you know what I mean. And besides, I really like you. I have since that very first night I saw you on North Avenue – in the rain. You know I should have written you a ticket,” he said smiling at her with a set of disarming brown eyes.
“I’m grateful you didn’t.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I took one look at you and I knew something was wrong.”
“How?”
“Besides the fact that you were speeding on a rainy ice covered road. And when I did manage to stop you and you rolled down the window, you had mascara trailing down one side of your face. I assumed from crying.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And get off on the wrong foot. No thank you.”
“That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“You’ll find out soon enough that I’m no gentleman.”
“And you’ll find out that I’m no cry baby.”
“I know that, already.”
“How?”
“You look like you have your life together. You look successful in that Essence kind of way.”
“I like to think I am.”
“You are.”
“What else can you tell about me.”
“I could have wasted time, trying to break the ice, by asking you all the usual questions, like where do you work, what do you do there, and where do you live, but honestly, I know all that.
“How?”
“You forget, I’m a cop. I ran your license that very night as soon as I got back into the squad car.”
“And what did you find out?”
“That you’re forty years old, single, never married, his brown eyes seemed to twinkle at that, Carolyn thought, never arrested, and you live in a one bedroom apartment in Forest Park that rents for a thousand a month.”
“And you found out all of that from my driver’s license?”
“Well, not all of it. I did do a little snooping.”
“I certainly hope you found out all you need to know.”
“No all of it,” he said staring directly into her eyes.
Carolyn noted that his warm disarming eyes had become hard and piercing.
“Are you sleeping with that guy? Taylor Anderson?

“I’m Gonna Miss Her,” By Brad Paisley

This ends the free preview of Dancing With The Fat Woman

To find out how it ends, go to Amazon.com/books on Friday, February 27th (my birthday) type in either my name, Eliza D. Ankum, or Dancing With The Fat Woman, and buy the book for only 99 cents.  It has an ending that you won’t see coming.

Thank you for giving me this chance to entertain you.

Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders
STALKED! By Voices
Dancing With The Fat Woman
And coming soon Jared Anderson

 

 

Dancing With The Fat Woman – Chapter 38

Carolyn and The Preacher

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Chapter 38

THE SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING, Carolyn sat, alone, at the back of the Church. She was feeling lonely and truthfully a bit unloved because she’d spent The Thanksgiving Holiday by herself. She’d taken it for granted that Taylor would spend the holiday feasting at her place since he and Anna were no longer together. But as fate would have it, his mother had taken ill, or so the family said, and Taylor had rushed back home to Colorado.
Carolyn was of the mind that the old lady had faked the whole thing as a means of getting Taylor to come home. And even though it was completely childish, idiotic, and moronic, when Taylor had chosen his mother over her, she’d felt abandoned.
She could have gone to her sister’s for Thanksgiving but that would have meant showing up another year without a man and being the subject of whispered speculation and pity.
“Is she gay?”
“Can’t she stop eating long enough to get a man?”
“Oh my God, she’s getting so old.”
Rather than endure that crap again, she’d had dinner alone in her apartment. Three days later, she was still eating leftovers.
“God, how she missed Taylor.”

Emmet Cooper had a talent for spotting vulnerable women and getting them to do what he wanted, which is why at forty-five he was living rent free with his maternal grandmother. And right now, his eyes were on Carolyn Carter. From the look of her bowed head, teary eyes, and sullen expression she was ready for a real man – him — in her life, and not that SOB Taylor who followed her around like a neutered puppy.
As soon as the Service had finished, he’d make his way over to her and sound her out about having dinner with him. Of course, he’d have to avoid Rhonda.
Rhonda, his latest ex, and the most formidable one yet, was not taking the hint that he wanted out of their relationship. She saw herself as ascending to the thrown of First Lady one day, if, God forbid, something happened to Reverend Arnold and he took his place. But for all the ‘walk on water charisma’ she exuded on Sundays, Rhonda had a temper – a bad one. And she drank.
The two, he knew from first hand experience, did not go well together. When she’d had one too many she belligerent, cursed him to his face using fowl language, and threw things, mostly his. But worst of all, Rhonda hated his kids. She never let them forget, for a moment, that everything they had now, they owed to her because she was the one who had gotten him his first job after he’d gotten out of prison. For that matter, she never let him forget it either.
Sure Rhonda had gotten him a job as a Security Guard at the company where she worked, but it was all his own doing saving the money to get his criminal record sponged, applying for a position with the Melrose Park Police Department when everyone said it was impossible for an ex-con to become a cop, studying long hours for the Police exam, and getting his ass in shape to pass the physical. That was all him.
He was tired of asking for forgiveness, and tired of pussyfooting around her temper.
He would be the first to admit that it had taken him a while to get up off his knees. But he had repaid that debt to Rhonda by giving her the past three years of his life. As far as he was concerned, that was enough. He was a free man now and Carolyn was looking a bit lost without that SOB who usually accompanied her. “While the cat’s away,” he thought, scanning the room making sure Taylor wasn’t sitting elsewhere in the sanctuary. He also, had to figure out how he was going to get past Rhonda. With her forehead wrinkled in a question mark and her eyes narrowed into slits, she looked like she was spoiling for a fight. “Think fast,” he told himself. Pastor Arnold is about to ask everyone to stand to their feet for the Benediction.” As everyone stood, he spotted Mother Williams. A devilish smile crossed his lips. He hobbled down the pulpit stairs using a cane, he’d ditched the crutches a week ago, and up to Mother Williams.
“Mother Williams, he began Sister Rhonda is going through a little bit of a trial and I think she needs a strong Christian woman like yourself to council her,” he said. “Would you mind going over and having a word with her?”
“Oh, no Revered Cooper, I don’t mind at all.”
He hid behind a tall fake ficus until Mother Williams had Rhonda cornered. When he felt safe, he limped over to where Carolyn was standing in line to shake Pastor Arnold’s hand before leaving.
“Well good afternoon little lady. I’m so glad you came out, today.”
“Good afternoon, Reverend Cooper.” Carolyn responded.
“Where’s your friend?”
“Taylor. Oh, he’s in Colorado. His mother is ill.”
“Does that mean you were all alone for the holiday?”
Carolyn turned and studied Reverend Cooper for a moment before replying, “Yes, but I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Well, I’m not, he said looking rather sorrowful. I find myself in a predicament.
“What kind of predicament?”
“I find myself in need of a ride home. I was wondering if you’d mind giving me a ride? It’s not for out of your way. Especially with the way you drive,” he said smiling down at her.
Again, she turned and studied his face. She wanted to ask how he knew where she lived. Then she remembered he’d seen her driver’s license and that he was a cop.
“Sure, no problem.”
“Reverend Cooper! Wait!,” demanded a woman’s voice.
“Sounds like someone’s calling you.”
“That my dear Carolyn is one of the first things you’re taught as a new minister. Don’t let the congregation take up all of your time, he said stepping around to Carolyn’s right blocking her view of Rhonda waving franticly at him.
“Reverend Cooper! wait!”

There Goes My Baby,” By Charlie Wilson

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By
Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders
STALKED! By Voices
OneThreeThirteen – Master of The Day of Judgment

 

Dancing With The Fat Woman – Chapter 37

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Chapter 37

JUNIOR PASTOR EMMIT COOPER, still on crutches, hobbled across the pulpit stage and up to the podium and let loose a flood of tears before leaning into the mike and exploding with “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Devil tried to take my life, but I want everyone to know God is still in control,” he screamed.

This set into motion a thunderous crescendo of amen’s with people jumping to their feet applauding and shouting back their agreement.  As the applause grew louder, the Church’s musicians joined in the spontaneous salute to God’s healing mercy.  And this was all that the ladies who hoop needed.  They were on their feet stomping, shouting, and twirling themselves into a frenzy.

It was a good five minutes or more before Officer Cooper had a chance to say anything else, noted Taylor, who had come to Church, that Sunday morning, with Carolyn as a show of support.  She still hadn’t told him exactly what had occurred that had upset her so much, but something bad had definitely happened to her at Church.

He knew her well enough to know that when her emotions had settled, she’d tell him all about it.  All he had to do was wait.

He had gone over to her apartment on Thursday night because she had called in sick that morning.  Something that she rarely, if ever, did.  He’d let himself in with his key and found her sitting in the dark, red eyed from crying.

Carolyn! What’s wrong?

I don’t want to talk about it, Taylor.”

“Baby, you can tell me anything. You know, I’ll kill for you.”

She had laughed at that.  Because she knew inwardly, that it was true.  He would kill for her.

“What are doing here? She’d asked him.

“You missed work, today.  I thought you might be sick so I came over to check on you.

“I’m not sick.”  She said getting up off the sofa and padding barefoot into the kitchen.

“I can see that,” he said trailing behind her into the kitchen because he knew she kept his favorite beer in the fridge and was probably on her way to get him one.

“I brought you food, he said holding up the white plastic bag loaded with Chinese food,” he said putting the food down on the kitchen table.  He liked Carolyn’s apartment.  It had real furniture in it and not that phony simulated modernistic crap that was everywhere these days.   He squeezed past Carolyn while she had the fridge open getting the beer and reached into the cabinet where she kept the plates.

“A solution to a problem presented itself today.” He said.

“What solution and what problem?”

“The Walters’ murder trial is over.”

“Over? It hasn’t even started.  How can it be over?, she responded putting a can of Budweiser beside his plate.

“It was your old friend, Gus, the bus driver, who ended it.”

Carolyn’s face wrinkled into confusion.  “Gus? What does Gus have to do with the Walters trial?”

“He ran over Raymond Walters this morning with his bus”  he said placing a large helping of beef and broccoli on Carolyn’s plate.

“Wait,” he thought, sighing deeply as he watched Reverend Cooper – the same Officer Cooper who had threatened him three weeks ago – hobble around the stage.

Taylor waited until the shouting had died down some before leaning over to Carolyn and asking, “Did you know he was back?”

“Back?” Responded Carolyn.  “I never knew he was gone.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t know he was gone?”

“I mean, Carolyn said turning in her seat turning to face Taylor, I don’t know who he is, so how could I know that he was gone and now back.”

“He’s the Cop who almost wrote you a ticket, for speeding, on Halloween night, remember?  And later he got hit by a car while writing some other poor slob a ticket.  They announced it.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” said Carolyn as they inched their way through ‘the thank you for coming’ line at the close of service.

“It’s good to see you accepted my invitation,” spouted Reverend Cooper.

“Your invitation?” asked Carolyn.

“Yes, little lady.  I was the one who put the tract on your car,” he said casting a glance at Taylor.

“I hope you’ll do The New Christian Fellowship Church the pleasure of having your company again, next Sunday.”

“Well thank you, Reverend.”

“Reverend Cooper.”

Taylor wanted to slap the man into next week because he had a bad feeling about the guy, reverend or not.

“Thank God For The Preacher, By Mike Bowling

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By
Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders
STALKED! By Voices
OneThreeThirteen – Master of The Day of Judgment
and coming soon Jared Anderson